by Jenn Stark
“We’ll have three separate samples sent to your lab by this evening,” Armaeus said. He flicked his attention between us. “If there’s a way for your team to replicate the compound—”
“Team?” That roused me. “You’ve got a team?”
Dr. Sells reached into her pocket and pulled out a card. “Call me day or night, with whatever you need,” she said. “Your recovery is my primary concern.” She turned to Armaeus. “She needs rest more than anything.”
He nodded, his manner perfectly polite. “She’ll get it.”
Then his gaze shifted to mine, and his smile turned predatory.
“I’ll make sure of it.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Devil had apparently left the building, since the vast sitting area was empty when we moved back through it. “You guys kiss and make up?” I asked, trying to shore up my strength against what I suspected was going to be in my future. A bed, most likely.
A bed and Armaeus, if I wasn’t careful.
A bed, Armaeus, and a reaction I was going to regret unless I got a serious handle on things.
Fortunately, Armaeus seemed to be distracted by my question. Distracted and vaguely irritated, both of which worked fine for me.
“Kreios, like the rest of the council, is not under my control, Miss Wilde,” he almost snapped. “While I am the titular leader of the council, I am not its ruler.”
I casually leaned against the edge of the couch, as if my feet were totally steady beneath me, and I just, you know, wanted to take a load off for a second. “So what does being leader get you, then? From what I’m picking up, you don’t even have a full council sitting here now. What is it—the Priestess and the Fool? And Kreios, of course.”
“The Empress and Emperor are here as well, as I am sure Kreios told you,” Armaeus said coolly. “They are not needed for the daily work of the council.”
I frowned at him. “Not needed? Really? Do you seriously not give a crap that SANCTUS is planning to drop by for a visit?”
“You don’t know that for a fact.”
“Yeah, well, let’s call it a really strong hunch.” I stared out the far window to the sweeping panorama of Las Vegas. “There’s a lot of people down there who aren’t going to fare too well if SANCTUS decides to clean house, Armaeus. And I don’t know who actually is paying attention to the actions of the council, but if you don’t do anything in your own backyard…”
Somehow I had made it off the edge of the couch and onto the cushion while I spoke. I didn’t remember doing it. Still, now that I was here, I decided it was an outstanding decision on my part. Couches were much less dangerous than beds. Couches were in living rooms. It was broad daylight. The fact that my words were slurring ever so slightly was completely beside the point.
I flattened my hands on my knees, stretching out my fingers. They hurt. Then again, everything hurt. “So what’s the plan?”
Armaeus sat in the chair nearest me, amusement in his golden eyes. “The plan?”
“The fight. SANCTUS. They’re coming, and they’re probably coming here first. How are you going to stop them?”
“We’re not.”
“What?” I shook my head. I’d probably misheard him. I was feeling dizzy again, the vertigo returning even though I knew my feet were planted firmly on the ground, my hands gripping my knees, my shoulders tight, my back straight, my chin—
“You need rest, Miss Wilde.” Armaeus’s voice was suddenly too close. I blinked, startled, and realized he was face-level, which meant he was no longer sitting next to me but kneeling now, leaning in. “How can I convince you to do so?”
“I—” My words broke off quickly as he leaned just that much closer to me, his lips brushing against my mouth. He tasted of cinnamon and sunlight. “Um, that’s not helping.”
He edged back a fraction of an inch. “You don’t have anything to fear from me. I thought we’d established that. There is nothing that I seek to do to you without your tacit permission—other than help you heal.”
“Heal.” I blinked at him, forcing myself not to look at his sensuous mouth. “Healing is not something I really need your help on.” I squared my shoulders. “I’ve got this part down pretty well. I’ll go to sleep on my own. I promise.”
“It’s not been a good day for promises.”
Something in his tone made me look up at him sharply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t recall there being a deviation in my itinerary for you and Kreios, and yet I understand that he exposed himself to more danger—and others as well—after you both left the necropolis. That’s not the way you were supposed to conduct yourselves.”
“Look, I did the job you asked me to do.” I didn’t know if Armaeus was deliberately pulling my chain, but I couldn’t help but bristle. And bristling hurt, for the record. “I boosted Kreios from the Vatican and got him here. It’s not my fault he decided to take a detour. If you’d told me what exactly was hiding in that box, maybe I would have handled it a bit more carefully. As it was, I could no more stop him from doing what he wanted than I could stop you.”
I lifted a hand to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. Even my hair hurt. “Besides, you’ve got bigger problems than Kreios. At least he’s here. Whether you lead him or rule him or you’re just the first guy in line to kick the ball, he’s with you. And he’s useful. Which is more than I can say about your little Golden Boy back in France. Unlike, I might add, your limo driver.”
Armaeus’s brows lifted. He hadn’t moved from his kneeling position, and I felt his gaze on my face, steady and certain. “You’re speaking of Maximillian?”
“Yes, Maximillian. He’s the real deal, Armaeus. Dante isn’t. You have to know that.”
His lips twisted. “I don’t need another Bertrand to be the real deal. As I told you before, just because one member of a household has risen to ranks within the council, doesn’t mean that future generations must share the burden.”
“He wants to share the burden, trust me. He can go after Barnabus or figure out his own mad skills.”
“Barnabus is being tracked through other channels. Max would do well to remain where he is.”
“Oh, bullshit.” I waved my hand in front of his face to get him to back off. Instead, he captured my fingers in his, turning my hand around to study my palm as I kept talking. “He’s way overdue for an upgrade from limo boy, and… Um, what are you doing?”
“Your hands.” Armaeus barely murmured the words. “I thought Dr. Sells attended to them more carefully.”
“She attended to them just fine. They’re banged up is all. It happens when you—oh.”
My words broke off again as Armaeus pursed his lips, then blew a soft sigh across my abraded palms. A chill swept over the skin, instantly sensitizing it, and as I watched, frozen, the edges of the bright red scratches drew together, the skin knitting and smoothing until all that was left was a thin white scar. “Dude, what is that? Wolverine Breath?”
Armaeus merely picked up my other hand. I didn’t resist—what idiot would? This was way better than Neosporin. I tried not to moan as cold absolution swept over my palm. It was almost as if I could feel my wounds actively healing, stretching over the tears not only in muscle and flesh but in my psyche, repairing the damage caused by everything I’d seen inside Binion’s. Nikki’s poor lost psychics, the throbbing mob, the loud, soul-sucking music. And something—something else too. Someone else.
My mind slipped and stuttered, refusing to take hold. I was floating, adrift in a boundless sea.
“Sara.” Armaeus’s voice seemed to be coming at me from too far away. Was he in this ocean of sensation with me? My body shifted, becoming unmoored from its axis, but the Magician wouldn’t let me fall. He eased me back, steadied me, and his hands were at my face, my chin. Instantly, my headache eased. Even my hair felt better.
I stared at the ceiling, unable to speak, unable to move, lost along the waves of healing, pain dissolving into the endless waters surround
ing me. My lips parted, and I heard my own ragged breathing as I went deeper, then deeper still, to a place where there was no more pain, no more sorrow, no more regret. I would have sworn he was healing injuries I didn’t realize I had. I’m pretty sure he filled a few cavities while he was at it.
“Sara,” Armaeus said again. Then the hands moved from my head and drifted down my body, the energy not quite reaching my skin. “This would be easier if you would allow me to remove your clothes.”
That woke me up. “What? No!” My eyes flew open, but Armaeus was right there, his hands at the hem of my shirt, which had slid up when I’d stretched out on the couch. He pressed his hand against my stomach, and I moaned out loud. Dr. Sells had said something about a kidney bruise, but whatever it was, Armaeus found it with the palm of his hand. Waves of soothing cold radiated through me, and I felt my legs loosen right along with my willpower.
“It will take the barest of moments,” Armaeus murmured. “We can continue talking if you prefer.”
His words were mesmerizing as his fingers slipped up farther under my shirt. Cool air suddenly brushed against my skin, but before I could figure out where it was coming from, Armaeus had curled his fingers over my right shoulder.
“Sweet Christmas.” I went rigid with the reaction, his grip the most painful thing I’d experienced today, which was saying a lot. My semi-dislocated shoulder seemed to come apart in five different places before settling back in place, the pain shattering through me in a push-pull with the frozen wonder Armaeus was unleashing. His left hand stroked down my neck and over my collarbone, but even as my back arched off the couch, he slid both hands on the outer edge of my torso, completely missing my chest. I was pretty sure my breasts hadn’t been injured, but hey. He didn’t know that.
Then he hooked his fingers under the waistband of my leggings.
Instinctively, I grabbed for his wrist, the connection of my hand on his skin practically jolting me off the couch. “I’m good—I’m good.”
“I won’t harm you, Sara.”
“I know you won’t, it’s just that—”
Armaeus ended my objection with a kiss. As he leaned into me, I could feel one of his hands shoving down my leggings, his broad palm clasping over my battered right thigh. The cramping instantly stopped, and I nearly whimpered as his fingers wrapped firmly around my right ankle.
“Better?” Armaeus murmured against my lips, and I tasted the salt of my own tears as he moved to my left leg, healing the long gash with the trailing of his fingers up my leg. That gash extended far north of my knee, however. By the time the edge of the wound was shimmering with cold white fire, I was dealing with an entirely separate issue.
Desire pooled inside my belly as if my core had become liquid, all the frigid healing strength banking as he stoked fire within me. Armaeus may not have an all-access pass to my brain, but he wasn’t an idiot. He had to know the reaction he was causing.
I got my answer a second later, as his fingers finally, slowly closed over my breasts.
I nearly passed out.
Armaeus’s mouth was by my ear, his chuckle low. “You’re not wearing your Tyet. Should I take that as a sign?”
“Lost,” I gritted out. I wanted him to stop, but at the same time, I didn’t want him to. The danger crested again inside me, the fear of an unknown end with this man—this being—this whatever he was. “It was at Binion’s when…everything exploded.”
“We’ll get it back.” But he hadn’t moved his hands from my breasts. He kneaded my body as if seeking unseen injuries to heal, and damned if I didn’t arch up into him once more, molding myself to his powerful hands. One of those hands snaked around me and supported my back as Armaeus bent his face to my neck, his lips dragging along my pounding pulse. “Slowly… Slowly,” he murmured, and even my pulse found that it had to respond to the Magician’s command, as my racing heart stuttered to a gallop, then a trot, and the tears started fresh.
“Shhh, Sara,” he said, and something about his voice caught at me, something strange and foreign. He’d been calling me Sara, I realized, this entire time. Not Miss Wilde. On purpose? A mistake? Did it matter?
It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. Just as it couldn’t matter that Armaeus was standing now and pulling me with him, picking me up as if I weighed nothing.
“You really get off on carrying me around, don’t you,” I half muttered.
“It’s a weakness of mine.”
I laughed as he shouldered open another door, registering the chamber as a bedroom, but not Armaeus’s bedroom. It had an unlived-in look, as if it was constantly ready for company that may or may not arrive.
He slid me into the sheets with a murmured laugh. “Now, you will sleep, Miss Wilde,” he said. “Now, you will finally rest.”
He moved away from me and I shuddered with an echo of my former pain, an almost physical ache that was so crisp that I narrowed my eyes at him, instantly mistrustful. “Am I going to regret this?” I asked, already feeling sleep weigh down on me. “What you just did?”
His smile was enigmatic, his words so quiet I almost couldn’t make them out.
Almost.
“Not half so much as I am.”
Before I could ask him what he meant by that, he was gone.
I lay there for a long time after that, willing myself to surrender to a sleep that wouldn’t come. I knew I needed to sleep, to heal. But I felt more than anything else like I was back home again. You know. Before the explosion.
My fingers clutched at the sheets as one by one all the images reasserted themselves in a long dark march of despair. In the weeks leading up to the end, nearly three years after I’d first identified little Maryann’s whereabouts in a sensational news story that had led to claims that I was a burgeoning psychic detective, Mom’s behavior had gotten more manic.
She’d been chafing at the bit for more notoriety for me, especially since the police had adamantly refused to officially acknowledge my participation in missing persons investigations for fear I’d be targeted. At the end, though, she’d turned petulant. Almost resentful. Like she’d had her hand slapped for reaching into the cookie jar and couldn’t understand why. Then she’d announced that she was taking up card readings herself, and things had gotten better for a while. She’d been terrible at the cards, but I’d fed her readings before she’d leave to visit her “clients.” We had a system. It worked.
Until that last night.
I closed my eyes, willing myself not to cry. Mom had been my responsibility, but I hadn’t known that at the time. I hadn’t understood. And because I hadn’t been diligent enough, careful enough, she was gone.
I’d known something was wrong the next morning too. She’d left a note but not returned, but that was common enough. My mother had many, many friends who were more than willing to share a drink with her so late into the night that it was dawn before they stopped. I’d been uneasy, but not worried…until I touched the note itself.
Not thinking, not even breathing, I’d hauled ass out of the house—only to be knocked into a ditch by the force of the blast that had gone up behind me.
I’d never looked back.
After that, I’d never really stopped running.
By the time sleep took me, my face was wet with tears.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I was drowning in great, rolling seas.
No matter which way I turned or how I flailed, I couldn’t escape. I pawed frantically, and the water wouldn’t give way. It would shift backward, then flow toward me again, pressing against me, holding me close.
And it smelled like cinnamon.
Wait a minute.
With more effort than I would have thought I was capable of, I dragged open my eyes. I was alone, surrounded by at least seventy-eight pillows, in the middle of a massive bed that wasn’t my own. Which was easy enough to determine, because I didn’t own a bed.
Around me, the world dipped and rolled dangerously, the sense of vertigo I was al
ready growing used to an occupational hazard. The automatic questions popped into my head. How hurt was I? Where was I? And what was I trying to steal?
I lolled over, feigning sleep, in case anyone or anything was watching me. I’d learned over long years—some longer than others—that my first order of business was always my own physical state. None of the rest mattered if I couldn’t make my legs move.
I went through the assessment methodically, buried under the covers as I shifted and tensed and twisted, and the more body mass I covered, the more nervous I became.
Nothing hurt.
Everything felt unspeakably healthy.
That hadn’t happened in… That honestly hadn’t happened ever.
Bits and pieces of my last conscious twenty-four hours flowed back to me. The meeting in Paris. The chase. Armaeus. Rome. Kreios. The abbey south of Rome. Vegas. Dixie Quinn. Binion’s. Brody—
Nope, not going there.
Either way, the spell was broken. I remembered the rest of it too, all the way up to the watershed I’d sworn I’d never give myself over to again. Oh, well.
More to the point, I was in the middle of Armaeus’s lair, and the man hadn’t touched me. Not in any real sense. I mean, yes, he’d done the whole laying on of hands to heal me, which wasn’t to be discounted, but he hadn’t gone any further than that. Was it something I said?
I shifted again in the coverlets. I was naked, but a sweep of the gloom-shrouded room revealed a tidy stack of what almost looked like my clothes, only they were way cleaner. Curled up on top of the clothes was the Tyet.
Despite my fantasies of bounding out of the bed, gathering up my stuff, and hitting the road, my progress was markedly less impressive. It took me a full five minutes to reach the end of the bed, let alone flop over it. Still, the drop to the carpeted floor wasn’t jarring so much as dizzying. I brought my head up too fast, and the nausea swamped me again.
I looked out over the room, and there were no more walls, no more windows, no more ceiling or floor. I was suspended over a vast cavern, and the city of Vegas lay sprawled out beneath me, pulsing with pain. While businesses and houses and grand estates spread out like children’s toys from the epicenter of the Strip, the heart of the city lay here, as if a gold strike rested directly beneath in the desert bedrock, except the vein was pure magic, not metal. As I watched, that vein raced up toward me—or I toward it, plummeting down toward the crack in the land with no way to stop, no way to turn back, no way to—
